Can 36 Questions Make You Fall in Love?

February 5, 2015 8:40 PM

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Can you make a decision to fall in love? Writer Mandy Len Catron wanted to find out. As Catron writes in a wildly popular New York Times Modern Love column, she told an acquaintance about a technique, developed by psychologist Arthur Aron, in which two strangers ask each other 36 questions of increasing intimacy and then stare into each other's eyes for four minutes straight. When Aron conducted his study more than two decades ago, two participants fell in love in his lab and later married.

Catron's acquaintance was game, so that night over beers they started asking each other questions like "Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?" As the evening progressed, the queries became more revealing--"If you were going to become a close friend with your...